


Avalon

by Ashura



Series: All Tomorrow's Shadows [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts Era, M/M, Secret Relationship, Songfic, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-09-02
Updated: 2002-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-21 09:51:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2463959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/pseuds/Ashura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stolen meeting in a summer holiday - a realisation, a confession. (Archiving things from the old days; this is from 2002.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avalon

**Author's Note:**

> One of the first, if not the first, fics I ever posted to LJ back in the day. Oh, the halcyon Harry/Draco days! I don't hate it, so thought I'd find a place to keep it. Songfic, lyrics from Gravitation's 'Shining Collection', because that is how we rolled in 2002.

_Kiss shining, imitating loneliness_   
_Cutting into space with entwined regret_   
_Make me shining, fragments of my scattered heart_   
_A radiance that surpasses hope_

We had no rules, no inhibitions, and no expectations. It was a bizarre relationship-how many people can you ask to fuck you in every way you've ever imagined, but can't manage to exchange a civil 'good morning' with? It was as if we were each two different people, schizophrenic personalities, playing Jekyll and Hyde with our sex lives. We devoured each other at night, spat at each other in daylight, and never brought up the subject of what any of it might mean.

And then it was summer, and time to go home.

I confess I didn't know what to expect. So I expected nothing, and got precisely that. I started missing him in under a week, though that might not be quite the right term-sexually frustrated, that's a better one. I would lie in bed after everyone was asleep and touch myself and pretend it was him. Even in this, I was no more than a sad imitation of him. I was spoiled for anybody else.

But it was more than that. When a rivalry, a dislike-I hesitate to use the word 'hatred' because we never did hate each other, not really-as intense as ours is channeled through lust, it's mind-blowing. We had no limits in how far we'd go to get at each other, and that didn't change when we started having sex. We did everything. We tied each other up, tore ourselves free, submitted, dominated; we were tender, desperate, sweet, hungry. If you can imagine it, we tried it. We started under the stands of the Quidditch pitch, migrated to Hagrid's garden, empty classrooms, secret passages, and someone's abandoned treehouse. We stole blankets and candles from the dormitories when we wanted to be romantic. We played with blindfolds, scarves, handcuffs, spells. It was part of our strange mutual trust that neither of us would ever tell the other no. There were a few things we tried and didn't like, so we never went back to them, but we felt we had to be free to ask for anything, and know it would be accepted, agreed to. It's always all or nothing with us, why should this be any different? Some things weren't easy to ask for, but we did them. In one school year, my sexual education, and his, was complete.

That kind of limitless, no-holds-barred trust is hard enough to find in people who like each other.

So I started missing him. Masturbation just isn't the same. I experimented with spells and toys and anything else I could think of, but invariably I got lost in remembering how hot his mouth was, the jagged not-rhythm of his breath, the way his body moved, cheeks flushed-the taste of him on my tongue, my name torn from his lips like it hurt to keep in.

That summer I found and tried every toy and sex spell I could get my hands on, and was satisfied with none of them. I was in too deep, and he was in my system like poison, like alcohol, like aphrodisiac, and never again would anything, anyone else be enough.

I decided I had to see him.

There were ample difficulties to actually doing so. Problem the first: my parents would kill me-or, more accurately and probably more importantly, would kill Harry. Problem the second: I didn't know anything about his family, or where they lived, except that they were Muggles, which made paying him a visit out of the question. Problem the third: Neither of us could Apparate, and besides, students aren't allowed to use magic during the summertime, which includes flying broomsticks off our private' property or practice pitches. There was no way for me to reach him.

The obvious solution was to send him a portkey. They were allowed-after all, there had to be some way for people to take their children out during the summer besides the Floo network. I could send it to him with a letter, and if he wanted to-and I did not allow myself to entertain the possibility that he would not-he would touch it, and it would bring him...where? Back to the location problem again, since I could hardly bring Harry Potter into my bedroom. And more to the point, I didn't have the foggiest idea how to enchant a portkey.

Conclusion: I would have to get one from someone else, and I would probably have to steal it.

It took me most of the summer. I watched the mail carefully, I poked through old drawers and chests and credenzas under the guise of boredom, and during a family weekend at Hogsmeade I tried to slip away from my parents and investigate some of the less reputable street vendors. Most of them were a little too disreputable even for me, they smelled like liquor and dark magic, and I knew they would sell my secrets to anyone with half a bottle of strong spirits. And besides, none of their wares led places that even I would choose for trysting.

But I grew more desperate every night, and my body cried for him; his face was painted on the inside of my eyelids and the ghost of his touch haunted my hands. He was in my blood, and I needed him. When I made myself come I called for him, whispered his name into my blankets or choked it out in the air, and hoped that somewhere he would hear it.

It was the first of August when my chance came. My parents were hosting a party, by which I mean a Meeting of Those Who Wear Black Hoods, and my mother offered me the chance to avoid the entire mess and spend the night in the holiday cottage in Avalon. (It's not the _real_ Avalon of course, but a resort island off the coast, it's hidden by all kinds of warding spells and costs a bloody lot to get into.) An hour after she gave me the portkey-all set for eight-thirty in the evening, before the festivities really got started-I told her I'd lost it, and she sighed and looked exasperated and told me she'd give me another, but not to tell my father. Like I'm that much of an idiot, really.

Assured of a replacement, I went to my room and sent the portkey to Harry. The note I enclosed with it was brief and to the point: 

_Use this and come to me tonight if you miss me, I promise it's safe._   
_-D.M._

I was almost afraid he wouldn't come-that he wouldn't be able to get away, or he simply wouldn't want to, that two months apart would have changed him, that he would have outgrown me. I paced through the cottage so much I think the rug in the hall actually started to cry. I ordered food and wine from the house elves and sent them away, locked the rooms that contained any pictures which might give me away. I tried to wait. I thought I would explode.

Eight-thirty, and I held my breath.

Eight-thirty-two, I let it out again.

Eight-thirty-five, my hands started to shake.

Eight-forty, my stomach tied itself in knots, and I knew he wasn't coming.

Eight-forty-four, and he appeared.

I didn't ask him why he was late, if he'd had second thoughts about coming to see me, if he was afraid. I didn't say 'it's good to see you' or ask about his summer or even tell him how thin and tired he looked or wonder why he was barefoot and his glasses were broken again. All the tension, breath, desperation, nervousness, it melted out of me as soon as that slight puff of displaced air returned him to me. I went to kiss him. He was already moving for me, our lips met, magnetic, his hands were diving for my belt and I forgot how to breathe. He wore faded jeans a good deal too big for him; I tugged his belt free, pushed at them, and they pooled around his ankles. We clutched at each other, kissed all the places we could reach, tumbled to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs and discarded clothes.

I remember asking him, drunk on the first heady afterglow, still caught up in his arms, if he had ever wanted things to change.

I remember asking him, drunk on the first heady afterglow, still caught up in his arms, if he had ever wanted things to change.

"What do you mean?" he asked. His fingers were stroking through my hair, and I'm not sure he even noticed. I told him I meant Us, capitalised, an imaginary scenario where we could hold hands in the hallway or teasingly feed each other bits of fruit over the breakfast table. They were things I had not admitted to having considered myself before, but I thought he might. I was wrong.

He shifted beneath me, his hands fell away from my hair to lay flat on the floor. "I don't think so," he said, so honestly it hurt, scraped across my skin like a lathe, stripped me raw. I must have looked shocked, because he blushed, shifted again, brushed his fingertips across my cheek.

"Draco," he whispered, "I-" He sounded hopelessly unsure of himself. He faltered, nibbled on his lower lip. "Your father wants me dead. Or at least, he's a member of a group of people who collectively want me dead, whether he actually cares that much himself. I don't think-it isn't safe, that's all."

The mood was not broken, not completely, but it had changed. We had spent the better part of a year avoiding this discussion, but somehow it had begun, and this time we would not be allowed to escape. I asked him, "Do you really think I would let them kill you, Harry? After all this?"

Because I knew I couldn't. What we had was fragile and beautiful, the way a spiderweb is beautiful when the dew clings to it and the sunrise glitters in the droplets like liquid light. It wasn't in me to be so intimate with someone and then let him go. It occurred to me unexpectedly, a revelation that should have been as obvious and dramatic as a burning bush, but had seeped into my soul so I was scarcely aware of it. I loved him. Completely, desperately, perfectly. And yet.

Harry laced his fingers into mine, his gaze dropped to where our hands joined together, and he brought them to his lips, tracing the dip and curve of my knuckles with his tongue, and admitted, "It had occurred to me. We hate each other, don't we?"

Already I was sprawled atop him, I nudged his legs apart, flush against him, rocking slowly. I whispered, "Do we?" and he only gasped. I pressed inside him, slowly, insistently; he moaned and spread his legs wide, and his head fell back onto the blood-red rug. "Do you hate me, Harry?"

"N-n-no," he breathed, and his fingers dug into my arms. I pried his hands free and pinned them over his head, thrusting, deliberate, til his moans turned ragged and his hips bucked erratically beneath me.

"Good," I told him, and kissed his neck, and nipped the tip of his earlobe in the way that always made him bite back a scream. His body was slick with sweat, his heart thundering where our chests pressed together. "How could I let anyone do anything to you, Harry?" I whispered into his skin, at the place where his pulse pounded in his throat. "I couldn't even last a summer without you...." His hair was damp and sweaty and stuck to his forehead. I brushed it back, kissed his eyelids, the line of his scar, the mark from his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He moved so beautifully under me-back arched, legs trembling, hands fisting empty air and tufts of thick crimson carpeting.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and his breath against my neck was warm, full of desire and promises. "I didn't know." He kissed me, and he tasted like salt and summer and the sweet words still vibrating against my throat, and I wondered how he could be so dirty, so adventurous, and still so unfathomably dear. And I buried myself in him, hid my face in his hair, drove into him hard and hungry and urgent, and when I spilled into him, the echo of his moans tingled in my fingernails and my eyelashes and the soles of my feet.

"I missed you," I told him, because it was true, because I had to say something, because I meant I love you but didn't know how to make the words. His nails left dark crescents in my skin, he stared up at me with glazed eyes and dry lips, bucked his hips and rubbed against my belly because I'd come but he hadn't.

He whispered, "I missed you, too." He took my hand, pushed it downward, guided it between his legs. "I kept thinking about you," he said, and his voice was shaky and he could barely get the words out. And I had this sudden vision of him, almost like he looked right then, but alone and desperate and wanting me, hiding in his bed; I didn't know what his bedroom looked like or where he lived, if he shared a room or if the moonlight would spill onto him when it came through the window. I wanted to know. I wanted to know everything, I wanted to see him.

"Show me," I said, and pulled out of him, and rolled away, and he looked so betrayed, so pleading, that I had to kiss him again or die. "Show me," I repeated, speaking against his lips. "Did you think about me and touch yourself, did you miss me that much?" I saw understanding dawn in his eyes, glassy and green like the broken part of a bottle you find on the beach, and he nodded, wordless. I crouched on the rug, where I could watch him, where I could almost touch. He lay back on the red carpet, eyes closed, legs wide, brushing feathery light touches all over his body, and his fingertips barely met his skin but his breathing was ragged and heavy.

I don't know how long he remembered I was there, or that he was giving a show, but it didn't matter. I couldn't have looked away, wouldn't have, would never want to. My mouth was open, my tongue dry when it flicked against my parched lips. Harry teased himself more than I would have been able to, and his breath came hard like sobbing and wracked his chest, and he murmured "Draco," and grabbed himself and stopped teasing at all. His body shuddered and arced toward the ceiling, and he bit back a cry that held all of heaven in it, and I don't remember how but I scrambled onto him and kissed him and held him and whispered into his chest.

Let it out, I begged him, because for once there was no one close enough to hear, not my parents or his guardians or friends or teachers or caretakers. We were in Avalon, and it was perfect and only for us, and I wanted to hear him that way, just once. My eyes were wet and stinging and it didn't matter, we were both sweaty and messy and clinging to each other. He opened his eyes, glass-green, clear and watery, and sighed "Draco," and I think it meant I love you too. We kissed madly, with our eyes open, and I inhaled him, and he tasted like me.

And later that night, after I had reclaimed every inch of him, inscribed my name on the rise of his ankles, the hollow of his knee, the small of his back, the nape of his neck and the tender place behind his ear, after he had left his mark on the inside of my elbow and the roof of my mouth and the part of my hair, when we glowed and held each other but could barely stir ourselves into movement at all, I would try again to tell him that I loved him, and I would fail. And he rose, left the circle of my arms and started pulling on his clothes, all threadbare and much too big; he pocketed his wand and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"I won't ever let anyone hurt you, Harry," I promised.

He smiled. His clothes hung off him, his hair was damp and disheveled. His eyes were red, his cheeks smudged and blotchy; a row of hickeys marched down his neck and down his collarbone and disappeared into his shirt. He was so beautiful I thought I might go blind.

"I know that now," he said.

_Kiss shining, we're kissing in my eyes_   
_Melting away even the flower petals in our way_   
_Kill me shining, changing into the most exciting colors_   
_That first shone in a vision_


End file.
